Originally Posted by
Tom Odom
That matches what we found in the Desert Storm Special Study Group with then BG Scales as we wrote Certain Victory.
On the issue of public support, I still lean that way. I do believe that what is often thrown about as "winning public support" is often too sugary--as in a junior high school popularity contest. The case I have in mind is Rwanda 95-98.
1995 with the refugee crisis over and the refugees rearming, the new GOR cleared the IDP camps culminating with Kibeho. Depeneding on who was counting or guestimating, somewhere between 2000 and 4000 IDPs died at Kibeho. It was very much the Fallujah 2 of its day; we knew it was going to be bloddy and it was. But it convinced most of the IDPs to go home.
1996 the refugee camp clearing operations, the new GOR used an indirect approach to turn the clank of the militias and hardliners holding the camps. As a result, the refugees picked up in mass--just as they had done in 1994--and walked home. The new GOR--learning from Kibeho in 1995--refused to allow any way station camps to be established. The refugees were walked all the way home.
1997 the insurgency inside Rwanda flared as the rurned refugees brought the war back inside the country. Two things happend:
A. The GOR with Congolese rebel proxies took the Congo and broke the back of the Rwandan Hutu extremist forces. This was not a "clean" operation--it set off a major conflict that still plays out today with casualties in excess of 4million.
B. The GOR using former Rwandan military officers (Hutus) who had been integrated into the new military and the very best officers of the former rebel RPA to mount a multifaceted COIN campaign. By 1998, they had convinced the Hutu extremist sympathizers inside Rwanda that the former regime forces were defeated in the Congo and would never retake Rwanda.
I offer this again because it was not a case of winning the popualtion as in sudddenly they all looked to the new government as their savior and friend. Rather that they reocognized that hopes of a Hutu Power resurgence were doomed and that it was therefore in their best interest to accept the new government and its policies.
Best
Tom
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